d press as England's most insidious
defiler of church and state. Yet within a year of his death he became the
model of a proper country gentleman,

... he had an opulent Fortune, descended to him from his Ancestors,
which he left behind him unimpair'd: He lived on his own Estate in
the Country, where his Tenants paid him moderate Rents, which he
never enhanced on their making any Improvements; he always oblig'd
his Family to a constant attendance on Publick Worship; as he was
himself a Man of the strictest Morality, for he never suffer'd any
Body about him who was deficient in that Point; he exercised a
universal Charity to all Sorts of People, without any Regard either
to Sect or Party; being in the Commission of the Peace, he
administered Justice with such Impartiality and Incorruptness, that
the most distant Part of the County flock'd to his Decisions; but the
chief Use he made of his Authority was in accommodating
Differences;...[1]

In a comparison which likens him to Sir Roger de Coverley, there is less
truth than fiction. What they did share was a love of the countryside and
a "universal Charity" towards its inhabitants. For the most part, however,
we can approximate Collins's personality by reversing many of Sir Roger's
traits. Often at war with his world, as the spectatorial character was
not, he managed to maintain an intellectual rapport with it and even with
those who sought his humiliation. He never--as an instance--disguised his
philosophical distrust of Samuel Clarke; yet during any debate he planned
"most certainly [to] outdo him in civility and good manners."[2] This
decorum in no way compromised his pursuit of what he considered objective
truth or his denunciation of all "methods" or impositions of spiritual
tyranny. Thus, during the virulent, uneven battle which followed upon the
publication of the _Discourse of Free-Thinking_, he ignored his own wounds
in order to applaud a critic's

_suspicions that there is a sophism_ in what he calls my
_hypothesis_. That is a temper that ought to go thro' all our
Inquirys, and especially before we have an opportunity of examining
things to the bottom. It is safest at all times, and we are least
likely to be mistaken, if we constantly suspect our selves to be
under mistakes.... I have no system to defend or that I would seem to
defend, and am unconcerned for the c